The Riot Club

.Lone Scherfig’s film, adapted by Laura Wade from her own stage play “Posh”, is a withering condemnation of British public school elitism and specifically the type of people it breeds but it also has a real problem : we simply don’t want to spend time with the tossers, nor is it comprehensible why the central character would.

The “Riot Club” of the title is based on the real life Bullingdon Club, founded in the 18th century as an exclusive behind-closed doors  all-male students' dining club at Oxford University and which became infamous for its debaiches.  Wade’s script takes this core material and builds it into a harrowing depiction of Tory values (the current Prime Minister David Cameron is former member) as it take us from the simply arrogant to the actually vile over the course of the narrative.

The latter focuses on Miles (Max Irons, son of Jeremy) who is recruited by former Westminster schoolmate (Sam Reid) to join The Riot Club, a two-hundred institution which a scene-setting prologue informs us is sworn to “Eat till we are sick at the full table of life and never fade from glory”.  Despite striking up a relationship with wholesome middle-class girlLauren (Holliday Grainger), Miles gets drawn in but eventually the behaviour of the club gets well beyond anything he has conceived of particularly due to the actions of fellow new member, Alistair (Sam Claflin).

Unfortunately the antics of a lot of Hooray Henrys, with which the first half of the film concerns itself, are little more than boringly pointless (not the least because we have seen this kind of thing before) and the film only gets interesting around the mid-point when a ritualized celebratory dinner occurs although as this is about stupid and ugly behaviour, it doesn’t help greatly .

There are, of course, many films about people behaving very badly that are still worth watching. The trouble with Scherfig’s film is that its characters are not effectively humanized.  Miles is meant to be a sympathetic character and certainly he has a decency of which his club members are devoid but Scherfig only manages to make him seem knock-kneed compared to his cowardly erstwhile compardres who are largely a interchangeable typology of over-bred wealthy spoilt brats with only Sam Claflin’s Alistair emerging as a well-delineated character.

Scherfig is a skilled film-maker and The Riot Club is a well-crafted work with a certain ghastly fascination in its reality-mirroring function but in itself wanting in dramatic substance.

DVD Extras: Interview With Cast & Crew; Theatrical Trailer

Available from: Madman

 

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